Letter from the VAT man to me, late September (paraphrased from memory):

We have determined that you owe us £1,057.00 -- please pay up pronto, melonfarmer, or we'll haul your sorry ass into court.

Early October: *me pays*

Letter from the VAT man to me, mid December (quoted accurately but abridged):

A routine audit of your VAT account has revealed that there is a credit of £1,057.00 for which, at present, there is no corresponding liabilty.Detals of the credit are as follows:ELECTRONIC PAYMENT 12/10/11 £1,057.00Please check your records and indicate, by ticking the appropriate box which of the following applies to the payment.1. I have submitted the remittance in error. Please return the payment. [ ]

There being no boxes to indicate "I submitted the remittance when you demanded the money with menaces you complete twonks", I will tick box one and return the letter.

Heh. I was just extolling their virtues over the local Business and Occupation tax monkeys.

I spent 30 minutes in an exploratory talk with an accountant about it yesterday.

Me: I'm sorry but I don't really understand how to calculate the city portion.Him: Ah, yes, well you're not meant to. Basically (redacted)Me: BoggleHim: Exactly - so we need to work out if you owe A or B and then work out if we want to then work out the square footage of the bedroom we run the company out of... even then, we might be in a new situation where you're under the threshold for the local portion but over the threshold for other taxes...Me: And about the other taxes?Him: Oh, yes, these are on gross receipts but charged at 3 different percentage rates depending on the work you do, and then for other services you'll have to add a separate tax to the total because we count that as a sales tax...Me: But only for stuff in WashingtonHim: That's right... except of course...

And so on. Oh, and the taxes are all on gross receipts with no allowable deductions...

I messed up my taxes a few years ago - completely my fault; I always work multiple part-time jobs and didn't get the UK tax system yet and handed the wrong form to the wrong company, or something - anyway, I checked the following year to see if they owed me money (they usually do) and they said 'you owe us £75' and I said 'fair cop' and they clawed it back through adjusting my tax code.

Then the year after THAT they gave it back as an overpayment in previous years.